into, and they evolve." That's why
"hybrid is what we're going to see
more and more going forward."
As an enterprise's needs grow and
change, the hybrid cloud model
can offer greater flexibility.
Take banking, for instance.
Workloads in that industry can
be broken into a number of
components. "You can break
that workload into payments,
core banking transactions,
general ledger," Baker says.
All these components have
rigorous requirements in terms
of I/O, data, transaction volume
and security. As a result, these
elements are likely to stay in an
on-premises environment. With
less demanding components,
such as marketing, sales and
customer account management,
"you could make a case that the
public cloud could meet the needs
of those components," Baker says.
Many enterprises are using the
hybrid model when developing
and testing new applications.
To accommodate that growing
demand, IBM announced in
July a new pricing model (ibm.
co/2gomJrh) that allows clients
to grow their development and
test environment "dramatically,
without incurring any additional
software costs," Baker says.
Getting Started
For connecting to any kind of
cloud, enterprises can start with
APIs. Using IBM z/OS* Connect
enables cloud and mobile
developers to take advantage of
existing apps and data on z14 as
they create new apps. This can be
accelerated with IBM Application
Discovery technology, which can
be used to quickly find services
in IBM Z applications. These
applications can then be opened
through the creation of APIs that
are usable from any platform
without having to know anything
about the mainframe.
"Our cloud story
continues to evolve.
It is a very exciting
time for IBM Z."
-Barry Baker
For managing the development
environment using cloud
techniques, newcomers can start
by using several tools, particularly
IBM Cloud Provisioning and
Management for z/OS, along with
the z/OS Provisioning Toolkit.
This set of tools can rapidly and
safely provision, in a self-service
way, z/OS-based resources for
development, test and production
environments, which can be used
as part of implementing a full
DevOps solution on IBM Z.
IBM Z's capabilities will
continue to expand. One area
that IBM is actively pursuing is
blockchain workloads. "This is
also on IBM Z," Baker notes. "It
just happens to be running on
IBM's public cloud." Blockchain
24 // NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ibmsystemsmag.com
workloads have very high security
requirements and challenging
transaction-processing demands.
While blockchain is still new to
the enterprise world, more and
more industries are becoming
intrigued by its possibilities for
managing and securing databases
and transactions.
Client demands will change
and grow. And so, Baker says,
will IBM's cloud offerings. The
powerful new capabilities of the
z14 represent a new chapter in
that story-but far from the last
one. "Our cloud story continues
to evolve," he says. "It is a very
exciting time for IBM Z."
Gene Rebeck is a freelance writer
based in Duluth, Minnesota.

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